Surviving Purgatory
by DeniseV
Summary: John and Rodney stopped playing the Ancient game for a while. After Arcturus. But eventually, somehow, they got back to it. A missing scene set somewhere between Trinity and The Game, minor spoilers possible for those two episodes, maybe others.


"Hey," John Sheppard called, a hint of hesitancy in his voice. "Mind if I join you?"

Dr. Rodney McKay sat at the table in the mess. Alone. The genius from Canada had clearly projected his desire to eat alone, his back to the room, his notebook computer and what looked like folders of past mission reports occupying most of the rest of the space on the dining table.

McKay looked up cautiously. "Oh," he said, realizing that in order for Sheppard to join him he would have to make some space. In other words, he had a choice.

Or did he?

Dr. Rodney McKay and Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard had experienced the worst thing that friends and teammates could endure: a loss of trust. McKay still trusted Sheppard, despite the colonel's remarkable ability to distance himself from someone with whom he had to work closely every day. Sheppard had certainly won the 'creative ways to avoid the genius' award these last months. He was especially adept at it when Rodney was present, it seemed. The indifference, the downright rudeness, the clear signals that John was still second guessing the chief of science. All of these moments had acted as punches to the gut to the astrophysicist. Sheppard had said that he could try to earn back that trust. Little did he realize that the Air Force pilot would turn the effort into such a cruel game. '_This_' game had turned far meaner, and most definitely was more unfair, than the Ancient game they had been enjoying, secretly, in recent months. Well, not the most recent months. Not the months since the Arcturus debacle. They hadn't shared time together in that manner for a long time.

"I, um," Rodney said as he closed folders and piled them atop one another, trying to make room. "I was working on, well…" he looked up at Sheppard. The scientist received a friendly grin from the colonel as he waited patiently with his tray. That was…different. "I guess that doesn't really matter to you."

The quickest cleared spot ended up being just to Rodney's right. John sat down quickly.

"What is all this?" the leader of Atlantis' premiere off-world team asked.

McKay seemed surprised by the interest. "Oh. Well, it's our last six mission reports." Every one since Doranda was left unsaid. "I wanted to review them and see if there was anything specific that was done that could have been done better, or differently, or simply avoided altogether, to make the missions more successful."

In other words, Rodney McKay's own brand of second guessing. Damn. John Sheppard had a lot to answer for in the way he'd handled McKay and the fallout from that one mission. Elizabeth. Radek. Carson. They had all been to see him about McKay. Heightmeyer had practically camped out at his quarters after receiving her periodic briefings from Beckett and Weir.

Weir, Zelenka and Beckett had all managed to forgive Rodney this most disastrous of blunders. They would likely never forget – it was one of those events that needed to be remembered as a prime lesson, a moment in history that should never, ever repeat itself. But McKay was working well again with Weir and Zelenka. Zelenka. If anyone should hold a grudge after all of this it was Radek Zelenka. Rodney's very public, very mean-spirited dressing down of his science colleague would have made anyone think twice before even speaking to McKay again, let alone patching things up and moving on. The fact that Rodney had been so very wrong in every way, but especially in his condemnation of the Czech scientist, had likely made their path to recovery somewhat easier. Sheppard could have used, in fact, should have taken lessons in forgiveness from McKay's colleague.

Though the McKay ego might be well-stoked with his good works and positive reinforcement from Weir, his brain and his unlimited desire for discovery and learning well-nurtured by the renewed camaraderie with Zelenka, and his need for friendship at least partly satisfied by his love-hate relationship with Beckett, it was the continued, persistent, even blatant lack of all three from Sheppard that seemed to reinforce Rodney McKay's current, unwarranted second guessing.

It was something that John Sheppard had worked long and hard on, sometimes deliberately, but even worse, oft times by sheer neglect. It was unforgivable, what he had done - to a friend. The fact that he needed Elizabeth and Carson, Radek and Kate to open his eyes to it said more about John Sheppard than John Sheppard cared to know about himself.

The colonel shrugged his shoulder, grabbed the container of chocolate milk and shook it. "Look, Rodney, you don't need to do that. That's why we debrief. If Elizabeth or I thought we needed to cover anything else in further detail, with you or anyone else on a mission, you'd have heard from us."

"Yes, well, I understand that. But it doesn't hurt to check…"

John turned to face Rodney, stopping the scientist from continuing. "Rodney, I wanted to, uh, apologize for the way I've been with you."

McKay interrupted. "No. I probably deserved it. Well, not all of it, but some of it."

"Don't!" John said loudly. Conversations around them stopped. Rodney looked behind him uncomfortably. "Sorry," the colonel added, then, "What I've been doing is making it harder for you to do exactly what I told you that you should try to do. I…I wasn't thinking it through. I was mad. It was mean, what I've been doing." John looked his friend directly in the eyes. "I'm sorry."

McKay's eyes were large as he looked back at his team leader. His friend. He hadn't felt any friendliness from this man in the more than two months since he'd blown up most of a solar system. It had hurt, more than he ever thought that it could. During this time he had reverted back to old habits, the familiar protective bubble that had always worked before, to protect him from the pain of loss, because in the end, he was always on the losing end when he allowed himself to get too close. He knew it had been a mistake to let this man in, to let any of them in.

That mask, his own personal shield, had allowed him to move forward. With Elizabeth. And Radek. Carson? Rodney McKay knew he was stuck with him, a friend for life, as it were. The more these people welcomed him back, the more inclined he had been to leave that mask in his quarters.

With Sheppard, all of his efforts to raise that personal shield had failed. He knew the reasons…there were two. The first? John Sheppard. The colonel wouldn't let him. Each time he'd been ready to raise that shield, John had been there, demanding solutions, deriding him, in painfully obvious and often public ways, clearly and intentionally leaving him out of things at other times. It was distracting and disturbing, and McKay had been forced to fend off each slight as best he could, one at a time, rather than being able to build the defensive wall he really needed in order to avert the attacks.

The other reason? Rodney McKay. Despite all outward appearances, the often obnoxious, demanding, sometimes defensive, frequently dismissive, egotistical and always challenging manner that he projected, he was really, more than anyone on Atlantis really knew, full of hope. The potential of the enormous strides in science that this opportunity in this galaxy provided…what the work here could yield, was unimaginable. The potential for allies, in spite of most of the evidence thus far to the contrary. He had so much hope for these things and more.

Rodney McKay's hope is what failed him this time in successfully erecting that protective barrier between he and the head of the military here. He had built and nurtured, however inadvertently, a friendship with this man. BA. Before Arcturus. His hope, despite two plus months of evidence to the contrary, was that he could salvage that friendship. Somehow he knew, in spite of how painful it had proven to be, that it was worth it.

It was worth it.

Rodney blinked rapidly at John's apology. He put his head down, grabbed his glass and took a drink, needing the extra time to gather himself before he replied.

"Well, I, um…I appreciate that, Colonel. I hope this means that we can work, um, together again. I mean, the way we did." McKay looked up into Sheppard's face, finally. "Before," he added.

"I hope so, too. I'm sure we can," John said encouragingly.

"Good. Good," Rodney said, nodding in…gratitude? John looked away. 'Still a ways to go, huh buddy?' he thought. Sheppard leaned in close to his friend.

"You know, we left 'the game' in a pretty precarious place."

"You did," Rodney challenged. "It's all about military build-up to you."

"And if you had your way, every village would have a microwave oven and a ban on citrus!"

McKay's eyes grew wide but then quickly reduced to slits. "As you know, there are rules to the game that we agreed we would not break."

"I know that." They looked at each other, crooked grins spreading across their faces.

Sheppard raised his eyebrows and said, "Meet you there in fifteen minutes?"

"Make it half an hour. I need to drop this stuff off and check in with Radek."

"It's a date," John said as he took his tray, and McKay's, from the table.

Rodney smiled as he gathered his stuff. Eighty-two days, fourteen hours and twelve minutes. If anyone had been watching as McKay left, they would have noticed a decidedly lighter step. It had been hard earned.

The End.


End file.
